St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences

St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences (UAS) was founded in 1996 and currently has approximately 2,300 enrolled students. Study opportunities comprise degree programs and continuing education courses in the fields of Health & Social Sciences, Business and Technology. Especially relevant for TARGET is the 3-year bachelor’s course ‘IT Security’ and the 2-year ‘Information Security’ master’s program.

St. Pölten UAS offers students a vocationally orientated and academically sound training that prepares them to meet the challenges of the professional world. Alongside they acquire additional training in e.g. business administration, law, foreign languages, and interpersonal skills.

With its leading, internationally recognized expertise and its modern and well-equipped laboratories, St. Pölten UAS has intensified its research and development (R&D) activities over the past few years and will continue to promote its R&D strengths in future. St. Pölten UAS has taken part in a number of national (e.g. programs of Austrian Research Promotion Agency and the Austrian Science Funds) and international research projects (e.g. FP7, Equal, Interreg, Life Long Learning). Particular emphasis is put on wide-ranging collaboration with national and international partner organizations, whose additional know-how contributes to the project work.

Key research topics of the Institute for IT Security Research at St. Pölten UAS are malware analysis, privacy, biometrics, industrial security, software security, security management, and IT forensics/anti-forensics.

IKARUS Security Software GmbH

IKARUS Security Software GmbH is an Austrian pioneer of the software industry focusing on antivirus technology and content security. IKARUS is market leader for IT security services for large-scale enterprises in Austria and Eastern Europe. IKARUS invests a significant amount of its total turnover in software research and development and maintains a network of security experts in various countries. The in-house experts of IKARUS constantly share virus information with other research centers. The focus of IKARUS’ current research projects are in technical, legal and social areas: Starting from formal virus description and new approaches related to the Special Criminal Law and ranging to closed and open data security systems.The product range of IKARUS Security Software extends from security products for home users to security packages for complex enterprise networks.

St. Pölten UAS already has a strong cooperation with IKARUS that resulted in two joint research projects (KIRAS MalwareDef and an FFG Feasibility Study). In the proposed JR center, IKARUS will contribute its expertise in the area of malware analysis. In particular, IKARUS’ deep insights into the malware business and the current threat landscape will contribute to the development of novel detection and analysis methods in Module 1. In turn, IKARUS will directly benefit from the research results of the center. While signature-based malware detection is still a core business of IKARUS, the importance of this technique decreases with the shifting focus towards targeted attack scenarios.

CyberTrap GmbH

CyberTrap is the European leader in deception technology, which enables large commercial and governmental organizations to face current cyber threats in a new and unique way. It redirects attackers to its digital playground and lets them believe that they succeeded with their breach. The Austrian based company with offices in Vienna and Wiener Neustadt is focused on deception technology with its innovative SaaS solution “CyberTrap”. In December 2016, the leading Swiss telecom and IT company Swisscom became a shareholder of CyberTrap Software.

CyberTrap is a virtualized, isolated and controlled environment that is designed to be an attractive attack target. For the first time, this creates an opportunity to observe attacker’s behavior and analyze it in order to derive a unique local threat intelligence.